Well, That's Put A Dampner On The Day.

I've decided that one of my neighbours is not spitefully pouring water on the end of my garden path. In protest at me failing to find the time to paint my garden gate. There's a water leak right on the property boundary. It's either the supply pipe running from the mains pipe to the house or the mains pipe itself. Either is a pain in the ar'se. However the former is an expensive pain in the ar'se while the latter is a pain in the ar'se that will see me join the list of Thames Water's great many debtors. Water supply pipes run through building foundations so their repair is something insurance companies want to be kept informed about.

Located far down a slope from the foundation all the leak is doing at the moment is providing some much needed soil irrigation. So it's more of a top priority rather than an out and out emergency. However it looks like academic discussions about the built environment are going to have to take a back seat for a bit. If it is the supply pipe than I'm actually under a legal obligation to get it sorted in 28 days. If it is the mains pipe then, presumably, Thames Water can just let it leak for as long as they like, billing me for the water.

Incidentally Brazil's; "Years of Lead" coincided with the; "Brazilian Miracle." A period of what appeared to be a period of great economic growth, on paper. During that time the running of the Brazilian economy was left to a small faction within the Brazilian Military who'd both trained at the Superior School of War and were members of the Instituto Brasileiro de Açã Democrátia (IBAB/Brazil Institute for Democratic Action) or the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPÊS/Institute of Research and Social Studies). So the CIA, basically.

Funnily enough this saw Brazil return to the economic policies of Kubitschek. Brazil being reduced to one big franchise of large American multinational corporation carrying out massive infrastructure projects. Although no-one's quite sure why the leverage factor for construction work means that every $1 spent translates into $8 of economic output. Which produces fantastic GDP growth numbers without anyone actually getting any richer.

Kubitschek's big infrastructure project was the construction of Brazil's capital, Brasília. Designed as two Highways intersecting in the shape of a cross to resemble an aeroplane. With the three branches of Brazil's government located in the; 'cockpit.' Except if you look at Brasília from above it looks nothing like that. 

The workers brought in to build Brasília set up informal camps on the edges of the planned city called Cidade Livre. With them being them being extremely grateful to breathing the free air of the city having escaped the rural Donatário system they just stayed there and these informal camps became permanent. "Favela" is the term used to encompass all informal settlements around all Brazilian cities. The failure to provide sanitation services like water and sewer mains pipes to the favela's is one of the big inequalities of the Brazilian Miracle. It's a similar sort of inequality you continue to see in South Africa as a legacy of Apartheid. What the First World let South Africa get away with in return for standing as palisade against the Communist Second World in Africa.

So what's the betting I'm facing Lead pipes from the 1960/70's here.